27/09/2018

UN Chief Blasts Lack Of 'Strong Leadership' On Climate

New York Times - Associated Press

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
Photo: BRAZIL PHOTO PRESS / AFP
UNITED NATIONS — The head of the United Nations blamed lack of leadership Wednesday for the world's failure to take tough decisions needed to stop global warming, warning that a key goal of the Paris climate accord is at risk.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres bluntly told leaders gathered in New York that unless current emission trends for greenhouse gases are reversed by 2020, it will be impossible to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). The target was set in the 2015 Paris agreement, but the U.N. says government commitments so far only achieve a third of the emissions cuts needed.
"Why is climate change faster than we are?" he asked. "The only possible answer is that we still lack strong leadership to take the bold decisions needed to put our economies and societies on the path of low-carbon growth and climate-resilience."
Guterres' comments echo those of climate researchers, who say the world could miss even the less ambitious goal of the Paris accord of keeping temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century compared with pre-industrial times.
The U.N. chief challenged governments to end fossil fuel subsidies, help shift toward renewable energy and back a price for carbon emissions that reflects their actual cost. A recently published report by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found the cost of taxes and permits for carbon emissions among dozens of leading economies is over 76 percent below the estimated actual cost of 30 euros ($35.21) per metric ton.
Guterres said climate-related disasters already cost the world $320 billion last year, a figure likely to grow with increased warming.
He singled out the world's 20 leading and emerging economies — known as the G-20 — saying they account for about 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
As Guterres spoke at the United Nations, across town corporate leaders and government officials announced a range of programs intended to pump billions of dollars in public and private funds into what's often referred to as the "green economy," which aims to reduce the environmental impact of business.
Among them, the World Bank announced it would invest $1 billion in battery storage systems for developing and emerging economies. World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said the Washington-based institution expected to raise an additional $4 billion for the venture to triple battery storage capacity in developing countries by 2025.
French President Emmanuel Macron cautioned against governments and companies "greenwashing" unacceptably high carbon emissions with big-figure promises, citing the pledge by rich countries to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor nations tackle global warming.
That target is unlikely to be met, especially if the United States — which under President Donald Trump announced its withdrawal from the Paris accord — doesn't contribute its share.
Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, told the meeting of her recent visit to small Pacific island nations that are already suffering the effects of climate change.
"None of us can opt out of severe weather events or rising sea levels, so nor should we have the ability to opt out of action either," she said.
New Zealand is one of several countries considering enshrining in law a goal of ending all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The coming months will see a flurry of negotiations over the rules that countries will have to follow as part of their commitment to the Paris accord. Signatories have set themselves a deadline of agreeing to rules by the time leaders meet in Katowice, Poland, in December.

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In A Country So Dry Even Cows Take Showers, Climate Change Gets Ignored

Bloomberg - Michael Heath | Emily Cadman | Jason Scott

Australia’s government is as far from a plan of action as it’s ever been.
Farmer Leeanne Oldfield and her dog Jett at her farm in Wandandian, New South Wales, Australia.
Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg
From cooling showers for cows to airport runways designed for higher sea levels, businesses and parts of Australia’s A$2.7 trillion ($2 trillion) pension industry are starting to find ways to live with rising temperatures.
In the world’s driest inhabited continent, enduring a devastating drought that arrived in mid-winter, private action to prepare for climate change contrasts with years of division on energy and environmental policies. Australia’s latest climate casualties are its farmers, who are being forced to slaughter livestock and watch crops wither amid one of the worst droughts on record.
Leeanne Oldfield has abandoned expansion plans and the few dozen malnourished sheep that remain of her 300-strong flock can’t even drink from the dam anymore, as it has gone dry.
“In good years, this is usually full to the brim with water,” says Oldfield on her farm three hours’ drive from Sydney, pointing to the muddy pit where the dam should be. Frustrated by a lack of government action, she’s helped organize donations of truckloads of hay and grain to other farms.
Oldfield at the dried up freshwater dam on her farm.
Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg
“Farmers in this country are getting desperate, they’re on their knees,” said Oldfield.
Dry conditions are set to continue with eastern states including New South Wales — the most populous and the powerhouse of the economy — the worst affected. Economists estimate the drought could cut as much as 0.75 percent from gross domestic product growth.
Dry Nation
Australia receives less rain
than any other inhabited continent
  
Source:
Department of Atmospheric Science, 
University of Wyoming

Shortly after taking over as prime minister last month, Scott Morrison got on a plane and toured a drought-stricken farm in Queensland, announcing measures to aid the stressed agricultural sector. Yet as for broader climate policy, Australia appears as far away as it has ever been from a consensus on what should be done.
“The staggering thing is we aren’t leading the world,” said John Hewson, former leader of the now ruling Liberal Party who has worked as an economist for the Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund. “We should be showing them what can be done and the business opportunities from that in terms of investment, in terms of jobs, in terms of growth, are very significant. And they’ve just been cast aside like they don’t matter."
The road block: politics. Morrison came to the prime ministership after months of toxic infighting over energy policy saw Malcolm Turnbull lose a leadership vote that resulted in the nation’s sixth change of leader in 11 years. The new prime minister — who once brandished a chunk of coal in parliament as a show of allegiance to that sector — quickly ditched Turnbull’s contentious plan to lock in carbon emission reductions, leaving the government with no settled energy policy ahead of an election that must be called by May.
Coral bleaching at the Great Barrier Reef. 
Source: Kyodo News via Getty Images
With Australia battling bush fires in winter and the Great Barrier Reef facing slow destruction due to coral bleaching, voters want action. An Australia Institute poll this month showed that 73 percent of Australians are concerned about climate change, up from 66 percent last year. And just over half of people surveyed think governments aren’t doing enough.
Poisonous politics is also hitting business. Australia’s total investment in clean energy soared to a record $9 billion last year, largely driven by a rush to fulfill a government target that winds down in 2020. Investment will fall off a cliff over the coming years unless there is a major change in government policy, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Under the Glare
Australia is one of the most vulnerable developed countries to climate change
- yet also has the financial muscle to respond
Note: Ranking among developed economies.
Source: HSBC
“The government has revived the default approach the Liberal-National coalition has had on emissions since the 1990s: do as little as possible, hope that economic developments reduce emissions without policy intervention, deny that there are any policy issues, and defer as many issues as possible to another day,” said Kobad Bhavnagri, head of BNEF research for Australia. “It’s akin to having one’s fingers crossed and head buried in the sand.”
For Australia’s pension funds, the lack of certainty surrounding climate policy is a problem because they often need to plan decades ahead. With infrastructure assets in particular, which investors may wish to hold indefinitely, ensuring they’ll still be operational and profitable in a changed climate is vital.
“Climate change is here and the impacts are being felt,” said Emma Herd, chief executive officer of the Investor Group on Climate Change, whose members control about A$2 trillion in investments. “Large sections of the private sector are moving in concert with global change and not being driven by domestic regulatory pressures.”
Meantime, Australian firms are developing cutting-edge tools that allow investors to model how climate change will impact precise areas where they have an asset, says Herd. Nick Wood, director of consultancy Climate Policy Research, says the private sector’s attitude has “definitely changed.”
Forget Paris
Australia is projected to miss its global commitments on current policies
Note: Y axis = carbon emissions (MtCO2e)
Source: Climate Analytics, Ecofys and NewClimate Institute
IFM Investors, a A$111 billion infrastructure fund, has taken steps to safeguard assets against environmental change. It part owns Brisbane Airport, which built a new water side runway 1.5 meters higher than regulation demands. The fund is also offering lower berthing fees at its ports to less-polluting ships.
Construction & Building Unions Superannuation, a A$46 billion Australian fund, has committed to making all of its properties have net zero emissions by 2030.
A sheep drinks from what remains at the freshwater dam at Oldfield's farm.
Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg
“While Australia is locked in a policy quagmire on climate action, the world is moving on and this makes sound investment and economic sense,” said Kristian Fok, CBUS’s chief investment officer.
On her dairy farm 700 kilometers inland from Sydney, Ruth Kydd says there is only one answer: prepare now. To prevent dairy production dropping as cows become heat stressed, she’s installed sprinklers for them to cool off under, and stored at least six months supply of feed. That's put her in a stronger position than many to fight the drought.
“All our decisions have a long-term aspect to them, otherwise it’s not worth investing the money,” she says. How the climate will look in a decade or more “is always in the back of your mind.”

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Fear Climate Change — And Our Response To It

Bloomberg - *

Global warming will be expensive, and humanity’s irrational reaction may make it even more so.
The signs are getting clearer. Photographer: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
The potential costs of climate change, already the subject of heated debate, may actually be understated.
It’s not just the potential disruptions to weather systems, agriculture and coastal cities; it’s that we may respond to those problems in stupid and destructive ways. As the philosopher and cartoon character Pogo said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Consider how poorly we have responded to many non-climate-related problems. In the case of Brexit, for example, the Leave movement was arguably responding to some real problems. The European Union bureaucracy is too stringent, and perhaps the U.K. did not have an ideal arrangement with immigration.
But Brexit is careening toward disaster, with no good plan on tap, the two major parties in splinters, the British pound declining, the Irish “Good Friday” agreement at risk, and the U.K. seriously talking about food stockpiles and other emergency measures.
It would have been better if the British had responded to their country’s problems in a less extreme way, or simply learned to live with the problems they had. Instead, they voted for a rash and poorly thought-out remedy.
Similarly, you might think that supporters of President Donald Trump have legitimate concerns about illegal immigration and U.S. unwillingness to stand up to China. Still, that did not require a presidential “remedy” that has brought chaos and corruption to the White House and U.S. foreign policy alike.
In short, the world increasingly appears to be reaching for extreme and imprudent remedies to admittedly complex problems. These overreactions do not seem to be mere accidents, but arise from some pretty fundamental features of polarized politics — namely, that discourse has become less rational and technocratic.
When it comes to climate change, all this plays out in interesting ways. In the U.S., imagine that many Florida residents have to leave their residences permanently, due to fiercer storms or rising sea level. The rational approach might involve well-functioning insurance markets, some public-sector transfers and compensation, and better infrastructure planning.
The idea would be to limit the number of such moves or at least to lower their cost. That could prove very costly but essentially manageable.
But that is probably not what we will get. Instead, the debate may well radicalize Florida politics, which has consequences for national politics as Florida is a swing state. On the federal level, an infrastructure bill would invariably direct too much money to wasteful new projects in less populated states. Everywhere, the harsh, non-sympathetic tone of the debate will further corrode American politics.

Forced migration
Looking outside of the U.S.: Imagine that climate change forced or induced the migration of many people from Bangladesh. An ideal international reaction would involve foreign aid plus the cooperative parceling out of refugees to different countries.
Circa 2018, following the crises in Syria and Libya, does anyone really expect such a rational outcome? A more likely, though admittedly speculative scenario, is clashes on the border with India, the further radicalization of Indian politics (“build a wall”), refugee camps full of hundreds of thousands of people, and more extremist terrorism in Bangladesh.
I am struck by the costs of climate change suggested in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, hardly a source of denialism. Its cost estimate — “1 to 5% of GDP for 4°C of warming” — is relatively reassuring. After all, global GDP is right now growing at more than 4 percent a year.
If climate change cost “only” 4 percent of GDP on a one-time basis, then the world economy could make up those costs with less than a year’s worth of economic growth. In essence, the world economy would arrive at a given level of wealth about a year later than otherwise would have been the case. That sounds expensive but not tragic.
Unfortunately, that is not the right way to conceptualize the problem. Think of the 4 percent hit to GDP, if indeed that is the right number, as a highly unevenly distributed opening shot.
That’s round one, and from that point on we are going to react with our human foibles and emotions, and with our highly imperfect and sometimes corrupt political institutions. (Libertarians, who are typically most skeptical of political solutions, should be the most worried.)
Considering how the Syrian crisis has fragmented the EU as well as internal German politics, is it so crazy to think that climate change might erode international cooperation all the more? The true potential costs of climate change are just beginning to come into view.

*Tyler Cowen is professor of economics at George Mason University. His books include “The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream.”

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